Some embodiments described herein relate generally to motion capture systems, and, in particular, to methods and apparatus for improved motion capture and user interface technologies.
A motion capture system typically can record the motion of an individual in the real world and use the gathered information to simulate that individual actor's motion in a virtual environment (or “virtual world”). Some known motion capture systems employ body markers physically coupled to an actor's clothing or body to enable continuous tracking of the actor's position and movements. The use of such body markers, however, is impractical or inconvenient in some instances. Some other known motion capture systems use a video camera and computer processing to map real-world actor movement onto a virtual character rendered within a virtual environment. Such a process, however, often includes significant amounts of noise data, which results in “jitter” (small, random vibrations of the virtual character about the true actor) and/or other effects that tend to negatively affect the user experience.
Some known motion capture systems can also use the gathered information recorded from the motion of an individual in the real world to determine an intended user command, such as a user-interface (UI) command. Such a motion capture system typically maps a predefined set of user movements, actions and/or gestures to a set of UI commands. However, the analog nature of user movements can be perceived as a fairly counterintuitive mapping to a binary UI command (e.g., a selection or deselection command).
Accordingly, a need exists for markerless motion capture systems and methods capable of providing a more accurate, stabilized, reduced-jitter output, as well as a motion-capture-based gesture that more intuitively maps between specified user movements and binary UI commands.